What of illicit drugs? Turns out things are quieter there too. In fact, there may have been a little unnecessary panic. As Nigel Gladstone reports today, official statistics have indicated that drug crime in NSW is worse than it really is. Because of double-counting, 81,776 more drug busts than really happened were reported. […]

Data used to back up the use of drug sniffer dogs at music festivals and praise police busts has been “double counted”, raising questions over the legitimacy of drug-related strategies in NSW. The Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) said that drug-related crime statistics for NSW have been mistakenly inflated by the government’s official reporting agency for seven years.…

More than 8,000 people came forward to have their drugs tested at music festivals in the UK this summer. Testers found drugs four-times stronger than normal or being mixed with anti-malaria tablets and plaster. Service provider The Loop is compiling the information it gets from festivals for research it is planning to present to the Home Office and is aiming to attend…

History records that prohibition never works and that trying to censor human appetites for anything addictive is doomed to fail. Announce drug laws and declare drug wars and you not only fill the prisons with a new category of innocent criminals and corrupt the justice system, but you create the violent criminality to make matters infinitely worse. […]

Incredible new statistics reveal a major increase in the number of strip searches on NSW residents over the past two years — and critics say the tactic is “humiliating” and a waste of everyone’s time and money. The figures, compiled for news.com.au by NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge, show the number of invasive searches on people in the state almost doubled…

Just five years after Portugal decriminalised drugs in 2001, illegal drug use by teenagers had declined, the rate of HIV infections among drug users had dropped, deaths related to heroin and similar drugs had been cut by more than half, and the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction had doubled – and drug use has not risen. […]

Earlier this year, Australia’s landmark first pill-testing trial took place at Canberra’s Groovin’ The Moo. Deemed a success, the findings proved what advocates have been saying for years — that pill-testing saves lives. And now, the team behind the trial need your help to take it to the next level. […]

Required for treatment is a multilevel approach that accepts people as they are, in which compassion replaces stigmatization and rehabilitation supplants punishment. This would include: Supervised drug-use sites in as many communities as feasible; for those who need them, medically supervised opiates or opiate substitute maintenance, while for others, abstinence-based programs, without legal or moral coercion; for all, personalized trauma…

Harm Reduction Australia (HRA) — part of the STA-SAFE Consortium, which ran the Groovin The Moo trial — is seeking to raise $100,000 so that it can host more pill testing programs across Australia. The group’s President and co-founder, Gino Vumbaca, tells Music Feeds that the money will allow HRA and STA-SAFE “to lease equipment needed, and depending on the…

Harm Reduction Australia is hoping to raise $100,000 to roll out more music festival pill testing trials, following the success of the first pilot in Canberra. […]